Reclaiming the dance floor
Durango DJ pushes back on corporate EDM with Hydrophonic festival

Greetings, dear readers! For this week’s “Between the Beats,” I chatted with Colton Mowrer, a local DJ and promoter. With deep family roots on the dry side of La Plata County, he is leading the charge to build the Hydrophonic Festival, May 7-10, at Tico Time.

Dance music can be a surprisingly cutthroat world. Once a refuge for folks on the outside, these days, many house, techno and bass scenes can feel dominated by exclusivity. The scene can feel far removed from its origins in the 1980s Black and queer clubs in Chicago, when dance floors served as refuges from a hostile and violent dominant culture. The rise of EDM festivals over the last 20 years has, in many ways, paralleled the gentrification of the scene.

Against this rising sea of corporate, private-equity-backed weirdness, Mowrer and his production family – disciples of high-fidelity bass music – are trying another route with the inaugural Hydrophonic, a “boutique electronic music and arts gathering.” The event includes profit-sharing for artists, minimal gatekeeping, diverse performers and sound systems unlike anything this region has seen. No strange middle school social dynamics at play, here. This, my friends, is visionary work unfolding right in our back yard. I’m pleased to introduce Mowrer to you. I hope you enjoy a snippet of our conversation, and as always, see you on the dance floor.

SS: My first question is always, “What brought you to Durango?”

CM: I was born and raised in Durango. I got into DJing here about 16 years ago. It was a limited scene then. I DJed at what used to be Ponga’s and at Moe’s for a while. But we weren’t allowed much creative freedom. It was mostly bar music and requests. So we started doing little outdoor parties up on Missionary Ridge. We took my parents’ home theater system and some broken lights from Spencer’s. There’d be ten of us around a fire playing music for each other.

SS: What did you call yourselves?

CM: At that time we were Summer Soundz. Those parties grew. In the beginning, the local forest ranger was cool with us because we always cleaned up after other people. A few years later there were hundreds of cars parked up there, and he had to shut the whole thing down.

SS: And from there?

CM: We started doing stuff out by Navajo Lake and pitching stages to smaller festivals around the region. In 2017 we joined One Vibration Music Festival (in Hesperus) and threw a stage there. Things really took off then. The next year we got our sound system, the HSD, and started Unify Mountain Sounds. We’ve been making a real run at it since, both as a sound company and throwing events.

SS: Who was in that original Unify scene?

CM: Myself, Ryan Ehrig, Thomas Sitala and Austin Campbell. But it’s grown way beyond that now. It’s become a family thing. It blows my mind how many people believe in this and have contributed their time, energy, work and art. I just want people to be able to do the things they love more.

SS: What is it exactly that you’d say you do?

CM: First and foremost, I’m a sound nerd. Audio is my biggest passion. From that, the inspiration has been to bring people together and let them do what they love with other people. I kind of see Unify as a verb. I just want to unify people.

SS: Tell us a about the Hennessey Sound Design (HSD) system.

CM: It’s boutique audio. It’s not built to compromise for touring or truck-pack friendly setups. It’s built around the science of what should sound good. Minimal distortion, clean sound and projecting music the way the artist intended.

SS: Which brings us to Hydrophonic Festival. What is it all about?

CM: Hydrophonic is a culmination of bringing together communities and individuals we’ve worked with through Unify and One Vibration and trying to create something new together. Something that doesn’t fit the mold of commercial festivals where everything is micromanaged. Instead, let people come out and do their thing. Let them show their art and network with others.

SS: What can people expect when they show up?

CM: It’s grown far beyond what we thought it would be. There are workshops around music production, a whole stage for flow arts, multiple stages of impeccable audio and surprises around every corner. The idea is an all-encompassing experience.

SS: What makes it unique?

CM: It’s community driven. Our goal was to include as many people who wanted to be included as possible. It wasn’t about whether they were at a certain level with their art or music. It was, do you want to do this? Are you putting in the love? That’s been the core of it: love and collaboration.

SS: Where would you like to see Hydrophonic go in 10 or 20 years?

CM: I’d like to see it grow enough to show people that a different model works. In this industry everything gets monetary fast. We wanted to try something different. If this can grow, I think it can show people there are other ways to build community and create together.